Gang activity, followed by traffic safety, are the two leading "quality of life" concerns in Northeast Los Angeles so far among respondents participating in a Facebook poll conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Community Station.
As of 1 p.m. Wednesday, as many as 67 percent of the votes identified gang activity as the leading community concern, and 14 percent traffic safety.
Click here to visit the Northeast Area LAPD’s Facebook page, where you can scroll down and take the poll, which was posted Dec. 22 and announced by Capt. Bill Murphy in a Community Police Advisory Board meeting on Dec. 17.
Homelessness, graffiti and DUI trailed neck-and-neck, with 6 percent votes each, as third, fourth and fifth respectively in importance.
“What else is new, you put gang injunctions on one of L.A.’s biggest oldest gangs, and this is still the excuse?” asks one Facebook commentator, Omar A. Gonzalez. “Just because the suspects might not be white, but are Latino or black or Asian doesn’t necessarily make it gang activity.”
In reply, an officer who runs the Northeast Area LAPD’s Facebook page writes that while he would be glad to discuss the issue with Gonzalez in greater detail, “as a former gang officer myself, I make no assumptions about gang activity based on race. Street/prison gang and organized crime crosses all boundaries and has become very globalized.”
Writes Gretchen Guzman, another commentator on the Northeast Area LAPD Facebook page: “Gang activity I thought would be pretty obvious, so I am happy to see so many [votes] for traffic concerns.”
Other issues in the poll are ranked so far as follows:
School Safety: 5 percent
Loud Noise: 3 percent
Trespassing, including abandoned and foreclosed properties: 2 percent.
